Technology and Culture

74 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE stimulating and deserves being translated into English—after its various misprints have been corrected. Mario Bunge* Land behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains. By Robert McC. Adams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Pp. xvi+188, 22 figures. $8.50. This superb book makes a twofold contribution to scholarship and science. First and foremost it records in an exemplary fashion the archeological findings of an imaginative and intensive topographical survey of 867 tells and ruins covering an important, if limited and mar­ ginal, region of Mesopotamia—the Diyala plains; these findings reveal the major changes in the irrigation and settlement pattern of the region over a period of some six thousand years, and will therefore be of in­ estimable value to the archeologist and historian as well as to the agronomist and pedologist. Second, by integrating the results of this surface reconnaissance with the available historical, economic, admin­ istrative, and sociological evidence provided by cuneiform, Greek, and Arabic documentary sources, it demonstrates the existence in the Diyala plains—and by extension, to some degree in other parts of the Mesopotamian alluvium—of several successive and contrasting config­ urations of irrigation and settlement and thus paves the way for the social historian in his quest for related developments in the institutional structure of Mesopotamian society as a whole. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 is concerned with the contemporary scene in the Diyala plains; its three chapters summarize what is known about the region’s climate, flora, and fauna; the tradi­ tional agricultural practices; and the more recent trends of settlement within its borders. It is Part 2, however, that deals with the main theme of the book: the changing patterns of ancient occupance of the Diyala region, the word “ancient” referring to the vast span of time between approximately 4000 b.c. and a.d. 1900. These six millenniums of Diyala demography and ecology are divided into five major historical phases, with a chapter devoted to each. First comes the phase beginning with man’s earliest settlement in the land and ending with the formation of walled cities (4000-2100 b.c.). Next comes the phase during which the region first attained a certain degree of political independence, though it ended in a serious decline (2100-626 b.c.). The third phase witnessed a marked advance in settlement extent, accompanied by the first appear­ ance of truly urban centers (626 b.c.-a.d. 226). The fourth, or Sassanian, phase (a.d. 226-a.d. 687) marked the region’s high point of settlement growth as manifested in the number and size of the occupied sites, in * Dr. Bunge is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. He is the author of Causality, The Myth of Simplicity, and other books. A professor at the University of Buenos Aires, he is visiting this year at the Institut fur theoretische Physik at the University of Freiburg. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 75 urban construction, and in engineering irrigation; it was during this period that the Diyala plains reached their maximum territorial expan­ sion possible within the limits of the then available technology. Toward the end of the Sassanian era, however, the central govern­ ment collapsed, nearly half of the total settlement area was abandoned, and the recovery of the agricultural and economic development of the region did not begin again until after the Arab conquest that introduced the fifth, or Islamic, phase of its history (a.d. 687-a.d. 1900). The re­ covery continued for several centuries during the earlier years of the Abbasid caliphate, but the gradual decline of its authority brought about a serious deterioration of irrigation and settlement, and, with the Mongol invasion, this turned into a disaster from which there was no recovery until very recent years, when the application of modern agri­ cultural technology and engineering is making the land bloom once again. Following the five “phase” chapters, there is a sixth presenting a brief general survey of the findings; three invaluable appendixes chockfull of fundamental archeological data; and a magnificent series of pertinent maps and figures. One of the more refreshing aspects...